Employees are the most valuable assets of an organisation. Currently, the unemployment rate is at 3.7%, One side this is good news for the employees but organisations will face difficulty in replacing the qualified workforce they lose. Every month, employees planning to quit their jobs are increasing. Only in America around 3 million job holders are voluntarily quitting their jobs for better options. Not even 50% of the workforce is making it to half-year mark.
How is it affecting business?
Irrespective of its size employee turnover is extremely costly for a business. It is a strain on both financial resources and companies staff. Losing qualified personnel may cost a lot for the business. It affects the productivity of the organisation.
Consider, you have lost an employee who has particular mission-critical skills that your business depends on, or an employee who has reinvented their job and are a crucial part of your organisation. These people understand your organisation in-and-out. Don’t you agree? Every organisation has more than 25% of employees of such nature. Replacing such key employees may not only affect productivity but it also affects the morale of other employees too. It will not do any good for your business? Sometimes replacing such employees may cost you double an employee’s salary. So, it is important to retain your employees from changing.
What is Employee Retention?
Employee-retention is not just an HR challenge it is a business challenge too. It is one of the most overlooked aspects of the business. Many reasons contribute to employee turnover, some of them may include inadequate salaries, unappreciated, overworked, lack of effective management or new opportunities. Whatever the reason is an employee leaving your organisation will affect the operations of a business. To avoid such situations you must have employee retention strategies in place. Make sure that your retention strategies are aimed at incentivizing and improving all facets of employees experience.
Benefits of employee retention
Following employee retention strategies at your workplace has its benefits. Increased employee turnover calls for bringing new talent onboard. It takes time for your existing employees and new employees to build a rapport, which will automatically affect the work. So employee retention may save both your and your employees from such encounters.
Here are a few benefits of employee retention strategies.
- Reduces employee turnover
- Improves employee morale
- No additional expenditure on acquisition and training of new talent.
- Increased productivity
- Best customer experience
- Reduces cost and increases profits
- Experienced personnel stays as a part of your organisation
- Improves work culture
Employee Retention Strategies
Gone are the days, where employees are leaving an organisation for reasons such as family issues, place shift etc. Currently, employees are planning to quit or quitting their jobs for many reasons, but the most commonly found reasons are dissatisfaction towards current work or better opportunities waiting outside.
Here are a few employee retention strategies that will work.
Culture of open communication
Open communication at a workplace can bring many positive changes in an organisation and improve the relationship between employees and employer. An organisation needs to promote open communication within the organisation as it helps your employees to speak their minds. Most people look for a new job when they’re dissatisfied with their current workplace. If you establish open communication at your workplace it will allow your employees to share their opinions, ideas and other grievances.
Encourage your employees to talk with the management when they’re facing an issue. Open communication will allow you to understand your employees better and resolve their grievances or any other issue. Encourage open, respectful and transparent communication at all levels in your organisation. Understanding your employee’s reasons to leave your organisation during an exit interview is not of much help. Don’t you agree? You must understand them from the start and stop them from taking such step and clear open communication from day 1 will help you in achieving that.
Retention starts with hiring
Retention is not something that starts after hiring an employee. It begins right from the start, i.e., from the application process to the final interview. Employee retention strategies should be put in place right from hiring. Hire employees that fit in your workplace culture and are willing to stay as a part of your organisation for a long time. But how will you know whether they will fit or not? There are some indicators present on the resume that will help you understand. Look for candidates with longevity at their previous workplace.
When you’re hiring an employee who is a job-hopper. It is more of a gamble on your part, as you’re investing your time and effort on a person who can leave your organisation when a better opportunity knocks on their door. On the other hand, when you’re looking at an employee who has worked for many years in an organisation, it shows that they have been part of an organisations ups and downs. It proves that they have a mindset to stick with an organisation when they care about it. Hiring employees who have shown their perseverance, engagement and loyalty to an organisation will assure you that they will be a part of your organisation too for a long time.
Make them feel valued
Your employees spend 9 hours of their day in shaping and enhancing your organisation and making it better. So as an employer, it becomes your responsibility to make them feel valued. If they don’t feel respected or valued it may affect their work and eventually lead them to walk out of the company. To avoid such circumstances, make sure you convey your employees how important and valuable they are for the company. It boosts their morale and helps them in becoming better. Make sure all your employees are treated fairly and get acknowledged for their efforts.
Not overburdening your employees with work is also a sign that you care and value about them. Simple “thank you” is the first step, you can show them your appreciation in the form of rewards, bonuses, promotions, raise, gifts, paid time off, etc. You can take them to a team outing for lunches etc to improve the communication within the team and give them a day away from work. If you’re not sure what rewards your employees would like then ask them directly is a better option.
Understand why they are leaving
Exit interviews are as important as recruitment interviews. Nowadays most businesses are conducting exit interviews, but not all of them take time to understand why their employees are leaving. For an organisation to understand why employees are staying, they must first understand why they’re leaving. When they’re conducting an exit interview for an employee leaving the organisation, you must ask them to give feedback on the policies at the workplace and the organisation as a whole.
When you understand where they were dissatisfied you can take steps to make it better and provide your existing employees with a better workplace. The key to understanding your employees is by being open to feedback. When you take your employee’s feedback on retention strategies, policies and practices in your workplace then it will help the organisation in becoming better and lead your workforce towards a happy workplace. When an organisation takes time out to understand its employees, it will leave a lasting impression on the employees and increases their loyalty towards the organisation.
Personal development of employees
When an employer invests in the personal development of the team members it will not only benefit the employees but the organisation too. An employer is providing his workforce with an opportunity to learn knowledge or new skills, it shows that he is investing in both their present and future career.
Statistics show that around 42% of the employees are happy with their jobs and job satisfaction increases with such career development opportunities. Some of such personal development activities can be paying for their conferences, workshops, creating in-house mentoring programs, tuition reimbursement etc. Promote their talent and work on improving their knowledge. Offering them the opportunity to learn the latest skills or technologies will help your organisation and also saves you from the cost of training a new employee.
Conclusion
The present generation of millennials are extremely smart, they consider many factors before joining or leaving an organisation. If you want to retain your employees then you must be all ears to their worries and give them an assurance that you care about them and make them feel like they’re an important part of the organisation. In the end, all that employee retention comes to is, do you treat your employees with honesty and integrity? Do you consider their needs and personal life important? Do you listen to their ideas and make them feel valued? If the answer to all these questions is YES, then your organization’s employee retention strategies are working and there is only a little chance of your workforce leaving your organization and choosing another workplace.
